What to read after Text, Speech and Dialogue?

The International Conference TSD 2003, the sixth event in the series on Text, Speech, and Dialogue, which originated in 1998, presents state-of-the-art technology and - cent achievements in the ?eld of natural language processing. This year's conference includes invited talks given by top-class researchers (Frederick Jelinek from Johns H- kinsUniversityofBaltimore, SadaokiFuruifromtheUniversityofTechnologyinTokyo, President of ISCA, and Steven Krauwer from the Institute of Linguistics of Utrecht U- versity), plenary and problem-oriented sessions, as well as poster sessions and dem- strations involving 28 functional applications. The conference declares its intent to be an interdisciplinary forum, which intertwines researchinspeechandlanguageprocessingaswellasresearchintheEasternandWestern hemispheres. We feel that the mixture of different approaches and applications gives agreatopportunitytogetacquaintedwiththecurrentactivitiesinallaspectsoflanguage communication and to witness the amazing vitality of research from the former East Block countries. The ?nancial support of ISCA (International Speech Communication Association) enables the wide attendance of researchers from all active regions of the world. This volume contains a collection of all the papers presented at the international conf- ence organized by the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen in collaboration with the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University in Brno, ? and held in the beautiful city of Ceske ́ Budejo ? vice (South Bohemia, Czech Republic), September 8-12, 2003. Each of the submitted papers was thoroughly reviewed by three membersoftheconferencereviewingteamconsistingofmorethan40world-famouss- cialists in the conference topic areas.